The Great, Constantly Changing Picture Gallery, Troisième partie: la vengeance!

[Griz882]

P.S.

Anniversary of D-Day today! A worker at NARA found a bunch of USN Combat Camera shots from D-Day that have been rarely seen. He posted them here....https://www.flickr.com/photos/42642564@N02/albums/72157708769183367/page1

The P-38 on the beach is interesting...more research is required!

 

[Alpha_Echo_606]

D-Day - Normandy

Photos of the D-Day landings and the Normandy Campaign

www.flickr.com

Good stuff @Grizz882.

 

[Griz882]

@HeyJoe did you know Devin “Boots” Jones? He was in VT-27 with me and went on to fly Tomcats (got shot down and rescued). I always remember him because one night in the Corpus O’club while talking about college degrees he offered up a great line...”Mechanical Engineering to Mach 1, History to Helicopters.” In our respective cases he was right!

 

[HeyJoe]

Just happened to be sitting in the scrub behind the TOPGUN building at a makeshift FOB when I saw an approaching helo attempt a SEAL insertion tactic that lacked somewhat in execution. To be fair, it was the first time for the pilot...and last time on that flight apparently. The SEAL aboard told me afterwards that he said “We’re DONE for today!”

 

[HeyJoe]

KC-10 providing fuel 100nm inside Iraq near Iranian border during last days of Desert Storm. These were longest missions I ever flew in a Tomcat lasting 6-8 hours.

 

[HeyJoe]

@HeyJoe did you know Devin “Boots” Jones? He was in VT-27 with me and went on to fly Tomcats (got shot down and rescued). I always remember him because one night in the Corpus O’club while talking about college degrees he offered up a great line...”Mechanical Engineering to Mach 1, History to Helicopters.” In our respective cases he was right!

I knew him before the shoot down, but not well. I did get to know him better afterwards. I knew his RIO (“Rat” Slade) fairly well and got to know him even better and work with him on the LANTIRN Integration Caper in 95-96.

 

[HAL Pilot]

The P-38 on the beach is interesting...more research is required!

This one? They gave captions if you click on them.



Or this one?

 

[Griz882]

This one? They gave captions if you click on them.

View attachment 26177

Or this one?

View attachment 26178

Well that was no fun! As an historian I have the need to make it much harder!

 

[nittany03]

All this is reminding me of the underway ready room discussion I had with my XO during the last part of my squadron's final Prowler cruise. The point I was trying to make was why the VAQ community wasn't trying to continue the legacy of the west coast A-6 community when we could, being as we were the last vestige of the Whidbey Grumman Ironworks. I think I brought up VAQ-128.

His quote was words to the effect of "there's a reason we called them fucking Intruder guys . . . "

 

[HeyJoe]

Home for dinner...VF-32 Tomcats hawking and the deck as JFK launched next event. I had been experimenting with shooting into the sun at this point on my learning curve with photography 30 years ago. Unlike today’s DSLR, you never knew what worked until you saw the results after film was processed nor did we have software to address flaws or exposure issues. This is a recent scan from recesses of my Shoebox of slides and negs.

 

[HeyJoe]

In Spring of 1990, we were told that the expected deployment aboard JFK was off due to peace breaking out with end of Cold War and no hot spots needed our presence. OPTAR was drastically cut back so we were going to be stuck at Oceana until end of Fiscal Year with little to do. We lucked out when Navy agreed to send JFK to both New York City and Boston for Fleet Week(s). Not a lot of flying as a result but liberty was awesome.

Then we heard Air Force Fighter Weapons School needed Tomcats to emulate Iranian Tomcats at Nellis with all expenses paid so we signed up enthusiastically and left our external tanks at Oceana to properly emulate the Iranian configuration. We had our own Casino/Hotel to ourselves and plenty of blue vans to transport us back and forth to Nellis. We were given free rein to be wiley bogies, but after one of the instructors got gunned, they asked us to fly to merge and not engage so they could practice premerge BVR tactics. Guess they didn’t want us to be that wiley after all.

I took this image during one of the not-so-wiley dories on the Nellis range. The fun ended with Kuwait being invaded while we were at Nellis. Our Spy walked into briefing room and said “Iraq just invaded Kuwait!” One of the pilots replied “Kuwait...where’s that?” We went to a get a chart and looked at it figuring we were too low on totem pole to get mobilized for deployment. Shortly, after lunch, the Skipper said “Flight Schedule is cancelled c-9s are inbound to pick us up. Jets leave in AM and we start FCLPs tomorrow night and are leaving in 3 days for the Red Sea!” A nugget pilot replied “Red Sea???...where’s that???”

 

[HeyJoe]

Chariots of the AEA Gods at Fallon. The Base PAO (“ZIP” Upham) is a former AI from VA-46 during Desert Shield/Storm who knew me well. Whenever I visited Fallon as part of my day job, he would give me a No Escort Camera Pass so I could capture the aircraft I found interesting. Only time anybody said anything was CAG 3 who looked out and saw me shooting on the CVW-3 flightline. He sent someone to fetch me and asked whom I was... I was sporting a beard so he did not recognize me as a fellow CVW-3 alumni from Desert Storm when he was a JO flying the Corsair. We had a good laugh as he said “ I should have known!” Saw him in 2018 at a USNA game wearing 3 Stars as Commander 2nd Fleet. This time, he recognized me!

 

[HeyJoe]

Hawkeyes at Fallon. Walkabout capture...

 

[Jim123]

Film camera days and wondering what the results would look like. Heh!

I tried and tried and tried to get a good shot of a Blue Angel head to head pass. My 35mm camera had a good zoom (38-210 IIRC) and 800 speed film started being a thing in the mid 1990s. So halfway decent tools for the job, though nothing you'd call high end (I was still in college!). My "good" camera had an annoying slight delay between when you pressed the button and when the shutter snapped.

I finally got one good shot- one pretty sharp F-18, the one I was tracking, overlapping a slightly blurry F-18.

I also got a lot of shots of only one damn F-18 and no opposing solo anywhere in the frame.

Prepaid film was a good deal then. Packaged deal up front where you paid for the film and three day development up front... and I burned a lot of film that way.

A few of my favorites came from disposable cameras, even waterproof disposables, since I was never afraid of taking those anywhere. Who cares if you scratched the lens in your helmet bag or from taking it to the beach in a liberty port because there was snorkeling there...

 

[HeyJoe]

I took this while waiting in line for Cat 3 in a VF-32 Tomcat. I really like the action it conveys. Wish it had sound, heat, jet last and vibration to truly convey the moment.